Tips for More Adept Foreign Currency Exchange Traders

Trading foreign currency exchange is not rocket science. Almost everything that you need to know is on the internet (and most of it is for free). All you really need is some spare time and the determination to succeed in an area that most do not know about. The world’s central banks are sitting on gobs of highly relevant information. Visit rba.gov.au and start feasting your eyes; continue on to boj.or.jp and federalreserve.gov.us for even more goodies. The world’s largest forex-oriented banks are also pretty friendly. Go to barx.com and arrange for a Barclay’s forex “demo account”. That will help you with how to actually execute trades and learn some advanced charting techniques. Since every forex bank has a different kind of trading platform, you can really go nuts (if you want to) with practising on everyone’s “demos”.

For more general forex-related information, nothing beats Reuters or Bloomberg. If you’re into Asia, try “NHK” in Japan or “Xinhua” over in China. Both have websites in English.

Using Internet To Improve Foreign Currency Exchange Knowledge

Almost everything you need, in order to understand forex, is available on the internet, for free. Since most mainstream media never carry stories about foreign currency exchange, you have to hunt a little bit to find the nuggets of knowledge that you need to read. Start with the major banks (e. g., Barclays or Deutsche). They’re constantly publishing forex reports, advisories, commentaries and highly specific trading recommendations. These can be found either on their respective websites or by reading “institutional news” websites like efxnews.com. Reuters and Bloomberg also published a lot of forex-related reports and data on their websites. For more Asian-related news, check out the English editions of “NHK” (the BBC of Japan) and “Xinhua” (the BBC wannabe of China).

What Makes A Successful Foreign Currency Exchange Trader?

Expert traders have some common characteristics. They usually are men who are informaniacs and love pouring over charts. You could call them geeks of a certain type. In addition, they are borderline workaholics who think nothing of spending part of each weekend going back over weekly and daily charts (of various currency pairs) in an attempt to see what they missed. Perfectionists! Most of the time, they’re highly disciplined tea drinkers who get up at 4:00 am (to see how “North America closed”) and can be found still sitting in front of their computers 12 hours later, watching how “Europe opens up”. Their trading styles vary all over the map, but their single-minded pursuit of trading perfection certainly does not.

Putting Theory Into Practice With Foreign Currency Exchange

Of all AUD-related currency pairs, the highest volume of trading occurs in the AUD/USD. Thus, for a beginner, it makes sense to try to get a handle on trading this pair. The easiest way to do this is by opening up a 4-hour chart of the AUD/USD and putting a “Williams Alligator” on the chart. The “Alligator” was created by Dr. Bill Williams, in an attempt to catch trends through the use of 3 separate moving average lines. The reason that it is called an alligator is that the lines routinely “open” and “close”, like an alligator’s mouth, allowing you to see when to buy and sell. (Technically, it’s when the 8-period moving average line crosses all the other lines.)